1. Dragon's Bone
2. Dragon's Reverie
3. Dragon's Heart

Dragon's Bone

The dry, thin scent of a draconic ossuary. Dragon’s blood resin with white sandalwood, dusty orris and crisp blondewood.

Death Valley shimmered in Buffy’s polarized lenses. Sand in rippling creamy dunes. Rocks in layers of reds and yellows and browns. And it was hot. April, and it was ninety. Giles had pulled the car to the side of the road to let her look at wildflowers. Water in the desert, green against the red, and flowers shockingly bright in the sunshine. They had a destination, though, and time pressure, and Buffy understood his reluctance.

The weapon that had killed the dragon was, according to Giles’ book, still to be found with its skeleton, tangled amongst its bones. And that weapon was, again according to legend, potent against hellgods as well as dragons. Dry Bone Canyon, hidden in the foothills. They’d been walking north and west through the dunes. Giles had a GPS in his hand, and a hand-drawn map. He looked as if he had been born to be here, in digger hat and sunglasses, weathered and dry and remote.

“Can you see it?” Giles pointed. Buffy followed along his finger. The air above the sand in that one spot glittered rather than shimmered. She gripped Giles’ arm. That had to be it, the place where the sorcerer had screened away the site of his lover’s last battle, the place where the dragon and the warrior had both fallen. Giles had cast the true-seeing spell on them both that morning, before they’d left the motel room, before dawn.

They passed through the rippling curtain of disguise, and it was revealed. Great bones, yellow, cracked dry, scoured by sand. Great bones, as tall as houses. Spine and ribcage and the frame of the wings, twisted across the sand. It had been a magnificent feat, to slay that dragon. Buffy saluted the memory of the brave man who had done it, on his own, to avenge what he had believed to be the death of his true love, the sorcerer. Only it had proved to be his own end, and the death of all life in the valley. The sorcerer had guarded the place where his lover fell with the curtain, and his lover’s sword with a geas. Only the heartsick lover, only the soul bitter and unrequited with its true love untouched, might take it.

Giles had tucked away the map and the gadget. Now it was a matter of finding where its heart had been, when it had crashed to the rock and crushed the warrior beneath it. Buffy found the skull, and traced the twisting line of the neck back, around. There. She thought she saw a flash where the sun reflected. A broad blade of bone jutted up from the sand, just a few feet left uncovered. And stuck in it was a black spike. Buffy took Giles’ hand and pulled him with her.

The sword was everything the legend had described: fierce, beautiful, black. Obsidian grip, roughened slightly to give the hand purchase. Rubies at the silver pommel and crossguard. The blackened steel of the blade was driven deep into what had been the breastbone, the dragon’s keel. Buffy sighed. It was beautiful. She longed to feel it in her hand and to take Glory’s head with it.

She touched the hilt cautiously, then looked to Giles. He nodded. They had agreed, when they’d discovered the legend, that she was the most likely of them to meet the requirements. Angel, forever untouchable. Buffy gripped, and pulled. She grunted with the effort, shifted her grip, and pulled again.

Giles groaned in sympathy. “I had thought—”

“So had I,” said Buffy, thinking of her demon lover. “But it’s not me.” She slumped to her knees on the hot sand, next to the spar of bone. All this way for nothing.

“Perhaps…” Giles laid his hand on the hilt, hesitating. Then he closed his hand and pulled. The sword groaned and scraped. Bone gave way, and collapsed to dust. Buffy, from her knees, reached up to brush his knuckles, clenched white over the stone.

Giles held the sword upright before his face, and brought his lips to the sun-gleaming blade.

Dragon's Reverie

Dragon’s Reverie: Opium-laced dreams of flame, plunder, power and fury: dragon’s blood resin, poppy, amber and ylang ylang.

The road south of out Death Valley was a straight line of cracked asphalt, with sand blown up into drifts across it every now and then. A single broken yellow stripe split it, the paint faded by the sun. A group of motorcyclists crouched over their tanks blew past Giles’ car at nearly double their speed. Buffy saw the riders, gaudy parrots in leather, stopped at the Badwater marker ten miles further on.

Giles slowed the car, and took a long look at the group, but didn’t pull over. Buffy thought about asking him to. Lowest point on the continent. Salty pools of water on the valley floor. Pupfish. Buffy wondered what it had looked like before the dragon had died here, and blighted it. Salt and borax. Sand and rock. Then they were past the marker, and the moment to stop, and Buffy straightened in her seat.

The riders passed them again fifteen minutes later, engines doppler-shifting from whine to drone, and were gone. The road twisted left, and the late afternoon sun glared behind them.

The sword was in the back seat, wrapped in a loose leather sheath Giles had brought for the purpose. Giles kept twisting around to look at it. The driving wasn’t demanding, but it made Buffy nervous anyway.

“You want me to drive?” she said. “You seem kinda distracted by your new toy.”

Giles glared at her, as she’d hoped he would, with the affection underneath that said he knew he was being teased. He settled down and drove the rest of the way more calmly.

They reached the interstate not too long after sundown. I-15 was Los Angeles and Las Vegas traffic, trucks arriving in California from points east, headlights and busy life. Barstow was blocky lighted signs, unnatural mustard yellows and flare reds, cement-box buildings on swathes of asphalt. Both were hideous after the stark beauty of the valley. And of the dragon bones, rising smooth and white from the sand. That sight would stay with Buffy a long time.

Giles checked them into a chain motel in the strip of businesses catering to travelers. The motel room was cold from the air conditioning. It smelled aggressively of laundry detergent. A shower to get the dust and sweat off, that’s what Buffy wanted. And then dinner, preferably involving a gigantic burger with barbecue sauce and fries. She let Giles hit the shower first, though, while she called Willow with the news on her cell.

She gave Will the full story, ending with Giles holding the sword, looking gobsmacked and dangerous at once. Giles had left it on his bed, laid out across the leather. Buffy described it to Willow, carefully, with the attention a warrior devoted to her trade’s tools. It was everything the legend had said it would be, so graceful and deadly. It could be used with two hands or one. The silver chasings on the pommel and hilt were somewhat tarnished. The blade looked sharp, completely untouched by the millennium in the sun. It smelled… interesting. The swords Buffy used smelled like the clove oil Giles treated the blades with. This scent wasn’t cloves. It smelled like dry smooth spices, like the bones in the canyon, like heated metal, like sulfur. What kind of spices? Willow wanted to know. Buffy didn’t have the vocabulary for it.

Buffy wanted to touch it again, explore for herself its balance and weight, but held off. It was Giles’ now. You didn’t mess with somebody else’s magic sword, not without asking. Especially not one you’d been unable to claim because you didn’t qualify.

An hour later, both scrubbed and refreshed, hair wet at the edges, they walked across the access road to a chain restaurant, not fast-food. Giles ran through the menu several times, looked grumpy, then finally ordered a vegetarian burger.

“Even the bloody salads have meat in them,” he complained to her.

Buffy thought about that, running over four years of pizzas and sandwiches and donuts and nourishing meals in the Oakpark flat. “Giles? How come I never noticed until now that you’re veggie?”

“Well, I haven’t always been,” he said. “Started a couple of years ago. And I don’t make a fuss about it.”

Buffy emptied her glass of ice water. Must have sweat more than she’d thought. “That’s like you. No-fuss Giles. You wanna talk about it?”

“About what?”

“How come you qualified to take the sword and I didn’t.”

“Oh.” Giles fidgeted with his flatware. “I suppose it was that, that your love for Angel was, um, not unrequited.”

“Just the one time, and oh boy. Every consequence but the one people usually worry about.” Buffy sighed.

“You couldn’t have known.”

“You just keep telling me that, Giles. You’re a sweetie. But that’s only the why not me. Why did you qualify? What was the curse-thingie again? The heartsick lover?”

Giles’ hand was closed over his bread knife. He slid it along the table, back and forth. He shrugged. Buffy decided to pry for another minute or so, to give Giles a chance to talk if he’d take it. He sometimes opened up to her, when they were away from the others like this.

“Jenny?” she said, making a reasonable guess.

“Perhaps. She and I never… though I’ve never been sure if she was… True love is such a slippery notion. I’ve never—” He broke off when the waitress arrived with their burgers. By the time she’d gone, the moment was over. The rest of the dinner conversation concerned possible avenues of attack to use against Glory, and the modifications to their tactics they’d have to make with Giles the swordsman instead of Buffy. The sword of Ryd the Wanderer was alleged to have been a skill-stealer: it drew from the blood of its victims, and passed their powers and skills along to the person who wielded it. Buffy made Giles laugh by speculating on the list of people he’d want to kill just to learn from them.

Giles unlocked their motel room door, and waved Buffy through. She hit the lightswitch. The first thing she saw was the sword, laid out on the bed nearest the door. Giles shot the bolt.

“Oh, yeah. Willow says there are a couple of discrepancies with the book. The color of the gems, for one. She also wanted to know what you thought the material of the crossguard was. The sword smelled weird to me, but she said there wasn’t anything in the description about that.”

Giles pinched the bridge of his nose. “The author of the text might not have thought to include it. Or the scent might come from its long time spent deep inside the body of the dragon. Or… let’s take a look at the gems.” He broke off and went to unwrap the sword.

“Giles. Not tonight. Right now, we drink some more water, and I rub some aloe vera lotion on the back of your neck where it’s sunburned, and then we lie on these awful little beds watching something horrible on cable. And then we fall asleep. Tomorrow we drive back, and then you get to do your research.”

Giles looked rueful, and put his hand to the crescent of skin on his neck he must have missed with the sunblock. He sat still and let Buffy rub her lotion over it. She didn’t often get a chance to be so close to Giles out of combat. In training, they touched— or collided would be a better description— but never outside it. Hugs between them were rare. Giles was not the sort to be physically casual with anyone when he didn’t have business with them. So Buffy enjoyed the moment of closeness with her mentor, performing this minor service for him. She smoothed her lotion over his neck and up to the edges of his hair. When her fingers slid below the neck of his henley, he stiffened up and told her, “Good enough.”

“You’re too tense,” she told him. “You need a massage in a big way. So do I. Can’t afford it, though.” She sighed, thinking about hot tubs and facials and full-body massages. Hank Summers sent them money, but it didn’t cover luxuries like spa treatments. Or college tuition. When this Glory thing was over, Buffy was going to have to get a job.

Buffy skipped the bad late-night television stage, and fell asleep immediately on her narrow bed. Giles was still awake when she dropped away, writing in his leather-bound journal.

Flame and smoke, below her. She twisted in the air, rolled, and dodged the first javelin thrown by the warrior below her. Why? Who was her opponent? Why was he angry with her? She could smell the sorcerer and taste his magic rippling around the man. Had the human betrayed her? The second javelin, sped by magic, pierced her wing, and she fell. The face of the warrior rushed up below her, and her last thought was that the expression on his face was despair. He raised his arms as if to embrace her. Flame spiked from his right hand. Then she hit—

Buffy sat up. The air conditioner ticked. Light trickled in the window from streetlamps. Giles was asleep in the other bed, face down, one arm dangling over the side. His hand twitched in his sleep. The sword stood propped against the wall between the beds. She pulled the blankets over her head and went back to sleep. She dreamed of hunting vampires. But she always dreamed of that.

When Buffy awoke, blinking in sunlight, Giles was seated at the little table by the window, folding over a section of the LA Times. She could smell coffee. Giles smiled at her, and nudged a paper cup on the table. She rolled out of bed and padded over. Vanilla latte. Her favorite. Buffy slurped.

“What time is it?”

“Just gone nine-thirty.”

“Shoulda woken me up.”

“You looked like you needed the sleep,” Giles said. Buffy didn’t argue. This trip felt like a vacation, a short relief of the unbearable strain she’d been under every day since her mom had died. It was just she and Giles, and that was always calm time for Buffy.

Giles had also brought her a croissant. She ate that and read the comics. Giles had laid the sword across the table. His fingers brushed against it, every now and then, while he read the paper.

The Magic Box, with the gang present: at once peaceful to Buffy, and a weight returning to her shoulders. The job of raising Dawn without her mom was hers again. The Hellmouth duty now resumed. The battle with Glory now resumed. At least this time they had a weapon, and hope.

The shop was homier than even the library had been, perhaps because Giles had stamped this place more firmly with his personality. Books and ritual daggers, statues to gods from many lands, candles and incense, red brick and feng shui crystals. And an inner sanctum, where one found the weapons and the secret life of the owner. The only place Buffy felt better in was Giles’ flat. That was an interesting thought, that Giles’ flat felt more comfortable than her own living room. Since her mom had died there, at least.

Buffy hugged Dawn, kissed her on the nearest cheek, generously ignoring the unsisterly grimace Dawn pulled, then plunked herself in a chair at the tarot table. Giles laid the leather pouch on the table, then the sword across it, carefully. Only Anya seemed uninterested. Even Tara, in whose hands one would likely never see a sword, leaned forward to look at it.

Willow had a book in her hand, on the swords made by al-Biruni of Damascus. She opened it to a page with a drawing of something that looked a lot like Giles’ sword. “Not in the typical style of the smiths of the area, commissioned by a Cornish adventurer and a famous one, Ryd of Carn Towan, also known as Ryd the Wanderer. Bastard sword, or a Scottish sword. Patterns on the blade, check. Tangs on the blade near the hilt, check. Blood gutter, ugh, check.”

“So we’ve definitely linked Ryd with the warrior of the Pueblo legend. Most interesting.”

“Maybe. Your sword is slightly different. The blade wasn’t black when al-Biruni forged it. And the gems here in the hilt are supposed to be some clear thing, not red.” Willow reached for the grip, and yanked her hand back with a yelp. “It bit me!”

“Pardon?”

Willow stuck her fingers under her arm. “Ow. Is the geas still on it?”

“I shouldn’t think so. It kept the sword pinned in place, in the bone, but I broke it when I removed the sword.”

“The bone disintegrated,” Buffy said.

“And you were able to touch it before. Could you try again?”

Buffy reached for the hilt confidently and lifted it. “Huh. Yeah. No problem.” She put it back down immediately. She looked at her opened palm.

“Is anything wrong?” Willow was still rubbing at her fingers.

“No, I just didn’t feel like holding it for long. It belongs to Giles, not to me. Impolite to be casual with it.” She’d had the oddest feeling it had been evaluating her, and had found her tolerable. Ridiculous.

“Interesting.” Giles sucked on the earpiece of his glasses.

“Giles, could the blade be turned black magically?”

“Oh, certainly. And the gems could also be colored. This is Ryd’s sword, Willow. There’s no doubt about that. I think we may assume that Anaoc sweated over his lover’s blade, layering on the enchantments.”

Giles’ hand rested on the hilt, and he bent forward to look at the damascened patterns. His eyes went unfocused. Buffy touched his arm, to draw his attention back—

Two men, in a high tower, open to the sky, the dark moon rising. Resins smoked in a brazier. Charged crystals lined the blade, still polished bright. They leaned together over the sword and kissed as their blood mingled on their clasped palms and dripped down onto the metal. With every drop, something awakened. The next ritual would involve more than this simple touch—

Buffy shook her head for a moment, but whatever it had been was gone.

“Pardon? Oh, yes, Willow, I think these are variations in the blade’s appearance we may accept as the work of sorcery. There are some non-invasive ways we can probe the enchantments. Let me show you a technique…”

Buffy rolled her eyes. That was it for coherent conversation from those two. She took Dawn home for dinner, and went out for a long and thorough patrol, and slept as the sky began to lighten.

Giles was dancing with the sword on the mats, barefoot, in loose trousers, moving in some stylized pattern Buffy didn’t recognize. She loved watching his footwork. Her Slayer gifts ensured she learned weapon skills quickly, but Giles’ many years of training still told. His handling of the blade seemed different than usual, to her eye. Buffy had spent so many hours sparring with Giles that she knew his style well. Ordinarily he was tight and economical. Today he was showier, almost pretty. Buffy watched and enjoyed, and contemplated what it might be like to duel with him. Probably he would kick her ass unless she could overpower him. Or outlast him.

He came to rest eventually. Sweat had darkened his t-shirt under the arms and down his chest. He fetched a towel from the pommel horse and came over to her, grinning.

“I’m a little out of practice,” he said, scrubbing at his face. “Must remedy that immediately. If I’m to be the one who kills Glory.”

“Yeah. Let’s do more one-on-one in training. Trying to keep up with the Slayer will get your ass in shape. So what was that you were doing? A kata?”

“Of sorts. The Council preserves a style of swordfighting long forgotten in Europe. Eastern styles are still real, still effective in battle. But Western styles have devolved into tournament fighting. Completely degenerate. Fencing instincts would be dangerous for you. Even the extant German style— Well. Suffice to say that the Council maintains its own school.”

“And that’s what you taught me.”

“Yes. You learned some tai chi somewhere. Angel?” She nodded. “Aikido also teaches a viable swordfighting style. But it’s not suitable for use with this sword. Two edges and a point for thrusting.” He gestured vaguely at the sword, which he’d laid on the mat below the pommel horse. “Dawn is?”

“Safely in the care of Janice’s mom overnight. They claim they’re studying for a biology test. I hope they at least get their homework done.” Buffy’s study parties with Willow had included actual studying, as well as giggling and nail-polishing and Slaying, but Janice was no Willow.

“Have you dinner plans? Let me just pop into the shower and we’ll go get something.”

Buffy wandered out to the now-darkened shop front to wait for Giles. Anya had finished her accounts and gone home, apparently. Buffy played with the tarot card sampler decks. Giles emerged from the training room about fifteen minutes later, carrying the sword on a baldric she’d seen him wearing before on patrols.

“You taking that with?”

“Don’t like to leave it. This place is too easily broken into.”

“Though I don’t think anybody else could pick it up. Not unless it wanted to be picked up.”

“Possibly not.”

In the parking lot of Fiesta del Sol, Giles dithered about what to do with the sword. He couldn’t just carry it into the restaurant. Or maybe he could; he started doing so when Buffy objected.

“Trunk,” she said, and he acquiesced. “God, Giles, you’re obsessed! Men and their toys.”

“I object to that characterization. Swords are not toys.” He held the restaurant door, and Buffy poked him as she slipped past.

Once seated in the booth, Giles fidgeted. He’d positioned himself where he could watch the car through the window. “I need to get a proper scabbard made. Something that fits it. Black, I think. It’s not the sort of sword one wears on one’s hip. Too long.”

“Black, huh?”

“Mm, with silver chasings. Perhaps picked out with red. To match.”

“Are you sure you’re not obsessing?”

Giles put down his menu. “What are you implying?”

“Hey, calm down. Just that you’re pretty worked up about your new magic thing.”

“Buffy, it’s not just a magic sword. It’s a legendary sword. Literally. Legends are told. I have been granted the privilege of wielding a legend. And I am going to use it to slay a hellgod. I think I have the right to want proper fittings for it.”

Put like that, Giles had a point. Buffy had to admit it. In the moments before she’d learned the sword was not for her, she’d had her own dreams about it. About how she would look spinning it over her head. Striding through a cemetery with it strapped to her back. It had called to her, in those moments. Now it had moved on from her to the man who’d broken the geas, but it still deserved to be shown off a little. Strutted with. Giles deserved to be seen as the hero he would be. She reached across the table and squeezed his hand.

“Yeah. Who you going to go to for it? The cobbler who does your boot mods?”

Giles’ shoulders relaxed. “No, I met another crafter recently. A woman who does some lovely jewelry as well. And I was thinking of teaching Willow some basic permanent enchantment skills. We could give the sheath some beneficial properties. Nothing like what the sword has on it. Lord! Anaoc was more powerful than the stories make him out to have been. I thought if anything they’d have exaggerated.”

The waitress appeared. Giles made as if to pick up his menu again, then didn’t bother. “Enchiladas nuevas, de queso. Y un Tesoro Añejo. Gracias. Buffy?”

“Uh, right, the chicken nachos, please. No sour cream. And a diet Coke.”

Their drinks came. Buffy stared at the glass the waitress put in front of Giles, which was definitely something that contained alcohol. She hadn’t seen him drink since that episode with Spike. No, wait, he’d had wine with her mom at Christmas, but otherwise… the single malt bottles had vanished from his house. She and Willow had been relieved.

Giles tasted his tequila, and looked pleased.

“Drinking again?” Buffy asked, with a complete lack of suave.

“Hmm? Oh. You, uh, mean… Not in my flat, and never alone. Not since. Well. I did learn my lesson.” His voice wasn’t biting, at least. If anything he sounded amused.

“You’d, uh, you’d tell me if you got that unhappy again, right?”

“Oh, my dearest silly Buffy. Yes, I’d tell you. I’m rather happy at the moment. Worries about you and Dawn aside.”

The busboy came by with a basket of chips and three stone bowls of salsa. Buffy had a chip. The salt tasted good. She had another, with some of the green salsa. It was spicier than it looked.

“Giles, are your parents alive?”

“No. My father died when I was a teenager. With his Slayer.”

Buffy made a little sound. That topic was off-limits by silent mutual agreement. “And your mom?”

“About a year before I came to Sunnydale. It wasn’t unexpected.” Giles blew out a breath. “We all go through it, Buffy. It hurts, but we muddle through.”

“Yeah. It’s not… it’s not fun. But I begin to see how it’ll be okay again. I just wish we could get this thing with the stupid hellgod out of the way. I feel like I can’t feel anything all the way through as long as this is hanging over me.”

“It, it does get easier, Buffy. You probably feel a little numb right now. It’s normal. I remember, uh, feeling that way. I— I’m here, to talk to. Any time.”

“Yeah. I know. And speaking of hellgods, let’s get back to business.” Talking tactics was, Buffy would admit, comforting.

“To business,” Giles said, and he lifted his glass and took a drink. There was spark of something in his eye that Buffy hadn’t seen there in a while. Humor, playfulness? The corners of his eyes were crinkled.

“So your sword packs a wallop?”

“To say the least. Willow and I were completely outclassed in attempting to understand its enchantments. We are fairly certain that it’s latent at the moment. Most of the magic is inactive. Some of it might trigger when needed, in battle. And some of it might need to be consciously invoked by me.”

“Do you know how?”

“No. For instance, the skill-stealing aspect. I have no idea how to use it.”

“Research?”

“Will only get us so far. We do have some of Anaoc’s writings to consult, but he wrote little directly about the sword. I suspect I’ll have to use it, become familiar with it. Perhaps take it out on patrol with you soon.”

“Kay.” Buffy drank some of her soda. Giles had another sip of his tequila. She could smell it from across the table. She leaned forward to sniff. He pushed the tumbler to her and smiled. She tasted it. Smoky and dark, biting and smooth at once. For a moment she saw the desert again.

Buffy sneezed. She handed the tequila back to Giles and made a face at him. His shoulders shook in a silent laugh, and he drank some more.

“Hey, isn’t it traditional to name magic swords?”

“Yes.”

“So?”

“I have an idea. But I’m not sure. Perhaps after fighting Glory I might know. I have the sense it’s waiting for something. It’ll tell me what its name is later.”

“You didn’t mean that literally.”

“Of course not.”

Their food arrived, and Buffy dug in.

Did other Slayers ever have to spend the day washing the kitchen floor? Buffy thought not. Other Slayers, she reminded herself, mostly did not see their twentieth birthdays, so even with the floor-mopping and the toilet scrubbing and the Lemon Pledge patrol, Buffy was ahead. She finished in plenty of time for her four o’clock training appointment with Giles.

The splotch of bright color behind the Magic Box counter was, for once, Giles and not Anya. Giles was not wearing a jacket, and his shirt was a deep green.

“New shirt?” Buffy fingered the silk. Silk?

“No, actually, was hanging in the back of the closet. Caught my eye this morning.” Giles shrugged. His body language, despite the shirt and the gold loop glinting in his ear, was self-effacing. His hands were in his pockets.

“It’s been good for business,” Anya said. “Women customers have spent more time in the store today. He’s decorative.”

Giles blushed, but Buffy noticed he didn’t deny it. “Well, Anya, you’ll have to do without my powers of attraction until closing. Okay, then?”

“Go train with Buffy. Improve our chances of averting apocalypse, please.”

Giles vanished behind one of the two screens in the back room, to change. Buffy was already in workout clothes. She took off the edge of her restless energy by doing a quick routine on the pommel horse, the kind that showed off Slayer balance and power. The sort of thing she’d been working on with Giles this year. When she came to a halt, she saw him standing and watching.

“Good,” he said, in his detached Watcher voice. “Smooth, controlled. This is the best form you’ve ever been in. Shall we?”

Buffy got out two of the weighted blunted broadswords they used for sword training. Hers was massy enough that she noticed it. Especially when Giles made her lunge and hold the lunge until the sweat dripped from her nose. She wondered if he’d want to work on muscle stuff today or technique. Probably technique plus endurance.

Giles took his practice sword from Buffy, then frowned. He put it back in the rack and stepped away from it. “No. I should get used to the weight and balance of my sword. Let me just…” He slipped a plastic sleeve over the blade. It was thick at the edges and point; it would prevent the worst injuries. He could still break bones with it. Though so could she. More easily, given the mass. This training was dangerous.

“Sorry,” he said, seemingly addressing the sword. “Don’t want to injure Buffy.”

They stretched first, with weapons in hand, and yes, Giles made her hold the lunge for longer than she wanted to. He was doing it alongside her, and grunting, which made Buffy feel better. It was always nice to have somebody suffering along with you. He didn’t wear them out, though. He had worse plans for them both: a long series of exercises. When they were finished with that, and only then, came the treat: sparring.

Pleasurable frustration, that was swordplay with Giles. Dueling with him was every bit as fun as Buffy had imagined it would be yesterday. He always seemed to know what she was about to do, and if he gave anything away to her, it was to mislead. Buffy fought with one part of her mind, and tried to learn with the other part. The Slayer-energy in her responded to the challenge, as fascinated by this as it had been bored by chemistry class. The Slayer-energy in her wanted to be that good, so that she could hunt vampires and take their heads.

Buffy laughed with what spare breath she had. Giles laughed back. He understood. He understood everything.

Finally Buffy got through and smacked him one, at the last moment remembering to pull off.

“Gotcha!” She let her blunt swordtip rest on the mats, and swiped at her forehead.

“You’re dead three times over, of course, from earlier touches.” Giles lifted the hem of his t-shirt and rubbed his face, exposing his flat stomach and a red mark across his ribs.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I don’t think you’re fighting at full capacity.” He had two hands on his sword again.

“Giles, it’s training. I don’t want to kill you.”

“Glory will. And she won’t hold back.” And he attacked. No warning, no flicker in his eyes, no shift of his feet. Just his body and the sword in concert, coming at her.

Buffy blocked and sidestepped by instinct. Then she let slip her control. The previous sparring had been croquet at a garden party. This was rugby in the mud. Twice the speed. Full contact. Shoving. And Buffy couldn’t keep up. Giles kept finding ways past her guard. Only Slayer reflexes and speed saved her; her grasp of technique had vanished in the adrenaline rush. If this were real, she’d be in trouble. If he were a vampire, she’d be dead.

“Fight to win,” he snarled at her. How he found breath…

Buffy finally beat him down, through sheer strength. Brutal hacking, her blade flat against his and pressing back, and a foot hooked through his that made him stumble. Giles was driven to his knees.

“Pax! I yield!”

Sweat soaked Giles’ hair and shirt. His face was bright, his breath fast but slowing. Buffy knew she looked the same. But Giles somehow looked magnificent like that. Shirt clinging to his chest, broad shoulders, the smell of clean sweat, corded forearms laid along his thighs as he recovered himself. Buffy shook her head; that line of thinking would go nowhere. She grasped his arm to pull him up—

The two men from the tower, this time in hot daylight in a shadeless courtyard. The warrior was bare-chested, in rough trousers. He moved smoothly, dripping with sweat, a black sword held in both hands. The sorcerer laughed at him. “Only madmen go out in the heat of the day here,” he said, in the language of their homeland. “And only you would train in it. Come. I’ve conjured ice for you.”

Giles blinked. “Ice?” he said.

“Ice. Woah.”

An hour later they were in the kitchen at Revello Drive, showered and changed but still wigged. Buffy dumped the pasta into the boiling water and set a timer. Giles sat at the kitchen island, staring at a glass of ice water.

“I’ve conjured ice for you,” Giles said, softly. He drank his glass down. “How many times?” he asked again.

“I don’t know. A couple. I don’t actually remember them. It was more a sense that I’d seen those two guys before. In a tower? Maybe. If you hadn’t said anything, I probably would have forgotten this one, too.”

“I believe it’s happened to me much more often. It’s fascinating. I think we’ve been getting little pieces of the sword’s story. Things that have happened that touched it.”

Buffy got the sauce into a pan and heating, then sat at the stool across from Giles. “Aren’t you freaked?”

“Goodness, no. Visions sparked by artifacts are rather the rule, Buffy. The sword is attempting to establish a link with its new owner. Perhaps show me how to use it.”

“Why me too, then?”

“Not sure. Perhaps it knows you’re my, my Slayer. My pupil. If I were to fall, I’d want it to go to you.”

“Morbid. Anyway, I’m more likely to die first.”

“Yes, do let’s argue about that.” Giles rolled his shoulders, then winced.

“Injured?”

“Merely bruises. You caught me in the ribs.” He pressed a hand tentatively to his side.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. You were fighting the way I wanted to see you fight. Though next time I’ll wear protective gear.”

“Macho idiot. That was crazy and fun, Giles. Totally out of control. How come we’ve never done that before?”

“I’ve never needed to challenge myself before. That was as much for me as for you.” Giles examined the knuckles of his right hand, which apparently he’d barked. That last fight had been stupid. Nothing like any training she’d ever done with Giles, which was usually so purposeful and focused. Buffy couldn’t wait to do it again.

“So we spar like that until you learn to beat me?”

“I likely never will. You’ll always be the Slayer. But I’ll improve.” He sighed. “In many ways it would have been better if the sword had gone to you. I’ll be at a severe disadvantage facing Glory, with merely human strength and speed. Particularly if I cannot discover how to awaken it.”

“Seems like it’s plenty awake to me.”

Giles sat up straight on his stool, then winced. But he was obviously excited by whatever had just occurred to him. “No. It’s dreaming, Buffy. Those are its dreams we’re sharing. My goodness.”

“Your sword is dreaming?”

“Dreaming of its past, while it waits. I broke the geas, Buffy, but all that did was bind the sword to the bone. Now I must discover how to awaken it.”

The timer went off. “Eep!” Buffy spun to turn off the burner and drain the fettuccine before it turned to mush. Giles slipped off the stool to call Dawn down from her room. They ate dinner, the three of them at the table in the dining room, the way they had almost every night since Buffy’s mom had died. Dawn rambled on about what a piece of cake the biology test had been. Buffy teased her. Giles ate the food on his plate without seeming to notice it. He was somewhere else, somewhere in the archives in his Watcher-mind, probably running though everything he’d ever read about magical items that slept.

Giles stayed late that evening, to guard Dawn for a paranoid Buffy while she patrolled. The patrol was long and hard; the docks had an extra-big helping of newbies. Buffy didn’t get back until the night had nearly ended. She crept in through the front door, as quietly as she could. The lights were on in the living room, but she figured everybody had to be asleep.

Giles was sprawled on the couch, on his stomach, face turned out. The sword lay on the floor along the couch, bare. His glasses were askew on his face. Buffy put a hand over her face to contain a giggle. His left hand was curled into a loose fist at his neck. It twitched in his sleep. Giles said something, shifted, and clenched the fist briefly. Buffy slipped the glasses from his face, turned out the light, and left Giles and his sword to dream.

Dragon's Heart

"Did you dream last night?"

"Yes."

"What about?"

Buffy and Giles were in All Saint's cemetery at night. The church was just in sight, behind a stand of maples. The treefrogs were awake and making a racket. What passed for a rainy season in southern California had ended, leaving Sunnydale as green as it ever was. The air smelled of jasmine and the Pacific.

It was lovely, for a night in a cemetery. Nearly all of Buffy's nights were spent in cemeteries. Except for the ones spent in sewers. And she'd spent one night on a beach, which had been romantic except for the nest of fire demons she'd had to clear out before she could let herself even look around. And by the time she'd finished that, she'd been sore and covered in demon blood and in no mood to enjoy moonlit surf. Now she was working up to feel sorry for herself, which was no good. It was a lovely spring night, and she'd staked one vampire already, and she was with her much-loved mentor.

Buffy was perched on a marble sarcophagus, knees under her chin. The marble had warmed up under her butt, so she was reluctant to move. Giles, who'd said he had long since given up getting her to respect the monuments to the dead, leaned against the opposite corner.

"The two of them. In Spain, I think, in the south. They stayed there for a while, among the Moors, while Anaoc researched theories about the earth's circumference. I feel a bit of a voyeur, now that I'm remembering these dreams."

"You mean you're dreaming about..."

"Yes, the two of them. Um. Together."

"Yow."

"Rather. And about swordfighting, but mostly about the two of them. They, ah, cared for each other." He coughed slightly.

Buffy was surprised Giles was talking about it at all. This was exactly the topic he was most likely to clam up about. He'd always listened to her, when she'd complained about boyfriends, and offered quiet advice when she asked it, but he'd never said anything about himself, or his own feelings on the matter. Buffy's theory, now, was that this was connected to his unrequited love and the heartsickness, which might or might not be about Miss Calendar. Whose death was Buffy's fault, no matter how often Giles said he thought it wasn't. Buffy's fault, for not killing Angelus, her own impossible love.

Who, she realized, mattered less to her every passing year. She'd never forget him. It was not a forgettable experience, losing your virginity to a vampire who turned savagely and sadistically evil because of it. It had taken her a while to get near sex again. Good old straightforward enthusiastic Riley had cured her of that, at least. Now she was left with the memory of a brooding demon who, in retrospect, probably wasn't very smart. And who, despite the brooding, had all the self-insight of a turnip. His experience hadn't changed him.

Perhaps only the living had the privilege of change.

Buffy cranked around on the marble block and considered Giles' leather-clad back, gently rising and falling with his breath. The hilt of the sword jutted above his left shoulder, strapped in place by the baldric. He'd tested the draw earlier, over and over, until he was satisfied. Now there was a man who'd changed, considerably, in the time she'd known him. Giles, in this very cemetery, in geeky glasses and tweed, gripping a clipboard, had lectured her about efficiency. Contrast with Giles now, in a battered brown leather duster, sweater, cords, and heavy boots. The geek was still there, the stammer as well, but there was more to him than that. Some of it was because he'd suffered. And some of it because he had shed his protective coating and chosen to let himself be known by Buffy and her friends. At least a little. And perhaps now a little more. He was still wound too tight, though.

"I think the sword is a bit of a romantic," Giles said, thoughtfully. "Choosing to show me those scenes, and not battles."

"You think it chooses."

"There's a definite sense of personality. Not awareness. Just a flavor."

"Or maybe it's showing you what you're interested in."

"What?" Giles swiveled around.

"You're the romantic, maybe. Just sayin'. It's a theory. Testable, even." Buffy remembered what little of college she'd gotten to enjoy.

"Ah. I could request, somehow, to see how the sword is activated. If it's responding to conscious impulses, which I doubt. Because I haven't been consciously requesting what it has shown me."

"Don't worry, stuffy guy. I hadn't thought you'd turned into a porn fan overnight." Giles glared, but there was no heat in it. "Give it a shot, though."

"I will. Tonight."

Buffy flicked her gaze past Giles' shoulder. They'd been focused on the conversation and each other, and not on their environs. So of course, a vampire. A teenaged one. "Behind you and to your left," she said, very softly. Then louder, "Not so much into watching two guys do it, huh? Sounds hot to me."

"Buffy!" Now that was a glare.

"C'mon, Giles, tell me what they got up to." Lower, "Three, two, one, now!"

Buffy rolled backward off the marble block. Giles drew his sword and spun in one smooth motion. The vampire lost an arm. Giles' stroke was barely interrupted. Giles stepped forward and took its head. The demon screamed out its death and the dust fell.

"Hardly a challenge."

"Newbie," said Buffy. "Did you steal any skills?"

"No." Giles relaxed his stance.

"So either that demon was totally useless..."

"Or the sword does not steal from the undead. Or it needs to be triggered, or any of a number of possibilities. It might need blood." He resheathed the sword.

"Blood. Why is it always about blood? Why can't it be about something less goopy? Like hair." Buffy sighed. She led the way to the back side of the cemetery, where the newbie had come from. Sometimes there was more than one. It depressed the hell out of her: every newbie was a resident of Sunnydale she'd failed to save. And that one had looked high-school age.

Sure enough, another pair that her Slayer-sense told her included at least one vampire was standing near the gateway onto El Camino Real, heads together. She motioned Giles to a stop and listened.

"Fun part starts around ten," the smaller one said. "There'll be girls."

"No shit?"

"Yeah, from St Mary's. Like, most of the senior class, I'm telling you."

"I know a guy who can get us a lid."

"Bring it, man. Bring him. Old school, gym. Be there."

They parted, smacking each other on the back like MTV gangsters. The one Buffy wasn't sure about walked out of the cemetery, towards downtown. The other came toward them. Buffy, on a hunch, pulled Giles back behind a mausoleum and let it pass. Definitely high-school age, in a green letter jacket and cargo pants. She let it get a good lead on them, enough that an unwary vampire wouldn't sense them, and followed. Giles seemed content to let her make the decisions, as always.

Buffy led them through shadows, threading their way through the graves off the roadway. Her Slayer sense ensured that she wouldn't lose track of the vamp.

It had stopped. Buffy circled around to where she could see. It was talking with some other vampires, about the party plans. Buffy moved in for a closer look.

"Oh, no! They're all teenagers!" Seeing kids get turned bothered Buffy more than anything else.

The vampires turned toward them. Four of them. And Buffy had just alarmed them. She made Mr Pointy the Fifteenth appear in her favorite prestidigitation trick, and braced herself. But Giles was stepping in front of her, sword spinning in his hands in the sort of showy display he'd always discouraged in her. One, two steps, and he had the head of the first demon. Anti-climactic, almost.

Buffy deliberately stepped aside to watch. She kept Mr Pointy out, just in case somebody decided to appear from behind Giles' back, but this wasn't her show.

The three remaining vampires circled Giles, fists up, game faces on. Giles seemed perfectly calm, standing in the Fool's guard position, inviting attack. Buffy drew five breaths, waiting, and then the largest of the three leapt at superhuman speed. Buffy instinctively moved to rescue Giles, but saw it wasn't necessary. He'd lifted the blade to intercept.

Buffy had cut up vampires with swords before, swords maintained by the fastidious Giles. He had a thing about edges. She had Slayer strength behind her blows, too. But she didn't think she'd ever dismembered a vampire with such ease. This magic sword thing was cool. Buffy wondered what it would take to get one of her own, if there were any others in the world as powerful as this one.

Giles left the maimed vampire screaming and writhing on the ground, and turned to the other two. He was a sight: coat swirling, black blade and pommel gems flashing in the lamplight, perfect form. The cheerleader exploded. Letter-jacket vamp screamed its second and final death a moment later. Then Giles returned to give the coup to the demon writhing at Buffy's feet.

He stood poised, sword centered vom Tag, circling slowly. Buffy's senses told her that nothing evil was near, but he preferred his own scan, apparently. His face was alive, one corner of his mouth lifted in a snarl. He twitched his hands and the sword slid smoothly down into the sheath on his back. He stood frozen a moment, then blew out a breath. He laughed nervously and wiped his palms on his trousers. Buffy came up to him and brushed the dust from his shoulders and arms. He was trembling a little under her hands.

"I only seem to feel nerves afterward," he said to her.

"Yeah, me too. Hey. Are you sure you're not triggering the skill-stealing?"

"Hmm? Why do you ask?"

"Your swordfighting is kinda different. Your style. More aggressive and showy than the usual Giles thing."

"You must be mistaken. Or perhaps confusing the two-handed style with--"

"Naw, Giles, I know what I just saw. Everything I know about swords I learned from you, and I've never seen you do that spinny thing before."

Giles pulled off his glasses and cleaned them. "Juvenile, really. We used to do that until the Council swordmaster caught us at it."

"You always lecture me about--"

Giles cleared his throat and pushed his glasses back onto his nose. "Well. He had a point. Um. Did I hear that right? Are they planning something at the high school site?"

Buffy sighed. "Yeah, you heard right. Gotta check it. Let's go get all sentimental over the rubble, I guess."

They walked, heading south to the flatter part of town, where the high school used to be. From time to time a car passed them, headlights flashing bright in their eyes, but the town was mostly quiet.

"That was a lot of high school kids turned. Five. And probably more." Buffy skipped a little to keep up with Giles, who moved fast with long-legged strides. "You know, I don't even know what's happening with them since we blew up the school. Are they going somewhere else?"

"Most of them are being bused south to Ventura. They made the junior high a three-year school. Construction on a new building on the old site is supposed to begin later this year." Giles shrugged. "They send me the Sunnydale faculty newsletter."

"Building on the Hellmouth again?"

Giles breathed out a silent laugh. "They're drawn to it, the darker ones among them. And they already own the site."

It was only eight short blocks or so, from this church to the school site, through a housing development, the kind with identical single-story houses on concrete slabs. Blue tv-flicker shone from living room picture windows. Toys lay on lawns, waiting to collect dew at sunrise. Why people brought kids to Sunnydale, Buffy couldn't figure. The high school mortality rate had been scary. High school had been scary, a lot of the time. And yet they came and lived here, with their SUVs parked in the driveways, their basketball hoops hung over garage doors, their neat little flower gardens edging the sidewalk.

And here it was, the cluster of buildings she'd spent so much time in, wrapped in a ragged loop of chain-link fence. Shattered red roof tiles, smoke- and water-stained white walls. Buffy was surprised to find herself so unsentimental about it. The things she'd loved best about it had moved on along with her. One of them stood next to her now, hands in his duster pockets, quietly gazing down on what had been his library.

"Good times," said Buffy to Giles.

"Hmm? Oh. In some ways." Buffy studied him a moment. His jaw was set oddly.

"What you thinking about?"

"Which window was hers. Her classroom. Third from the doorway."

Buffy let her shoulder come to rest against his arm, but said nothing.

"This bloody legend. It's had me thinking about her. It'll never leave me, in some ways. Roses, I can't... But time passes. It fades. A part of me will always love her, a little bit, but it's--" He swallowed.

"What is it?"

"Fading."

Buffy couldn't tell what he was feeling just from his voice, but his body was stiff next to hers. She rubbed her shoulder against his arm, then gave him some space. After a while he took his hands out of his pockets and turned to her.

"Come on, then," she said. "Let's see if we can find anything."

They searched the ruins for about an hour, quartering over what parts of the rubble were passable. The sections of the school that had been farthest from the blast zone, from Giles' library, were in reasonable shape. Or might have been, if they'd been maintained. As it was, stoners had been partying in what had been the gym. They'd left beer cans in piles, spraypainted tags on the walls, a rusty barbecue. Stained mattresses lay in the corners, used condoms and fast food wrappers drifted around them. Buffy smelled garbage-taint and far below that, stale beer and pot. Nobody there now, however. Not even vampires. They gave up and headed back toward Revello Drive.

"We'll have to crash this party, I guess. Doing anything Saturday night, Giles?"

"My calendar is clear."

"Be my date at this kegger?"

"With, ah, pleasure. I think."

"Pick me up at nine. I know they said ten, but I have a hunch we should be early. Come in for some tea?" Giles had taught her how to brew a great cup. Her mom had never gotten the knack, had always served poor Giles tannic mugs of Lipton, from the box she'd had since before Clinton was elected. But Buffy had a stash of Darjeeling, just for her Watcher.

"Thank you, Buffy, but no. I need to get myself into my own comfortable bed as soon as possible. Fond as I am of your sofa. Sleep well." He bent and kissed her forehead, and was gone from the porch in a swirl of coat. Buffy heard his boots on the sidewalk as he moved off, fast.

Buffy trained with Giles every afternoon for the rest of the week. They stuck with the practice swords after that first insane bout, but they bruised each other anyway, even through the protective padding. Buffy held back, out of respect for Giles' merely human healing, but Giles never did.

Her swordsmanship improved as it had not since she quit training seriously in her senior year of high school. And so did Giles'. It wasn't just his physical fitness. That had always been decent, and a week wasn't enough time for it to improve anyway. His style had shifted, no matter what he said to her about his past experience. He did not have her strength, or stamina, or speed, but he had uncanny balance. And a way of misleading her about his intentions that she couldn't get past. She knew it was happening, knew she had to look out for it, and still she found herself responding to his feints.

They were far past the level either one of them needed for routine demon-fighting. They were training for each other, for the competition. And for the looming threat of Glory.

Buffy watched Dawn sulking over her homework, or picking at her dinner, and tried to imagine a day when the worrying had eased.

Giles watched Dawn as well, from his seat at the end of Buffy's dining room table, and Buffy knew he was thinking what she was. He had to be ready to kill Glory. And he had to be there. There was no sense, he told Buffy, in having the sword and training with it if he weren't there at the critical moment when Glory attacked. So he had begun to be present, all the time, retreating to his apartment only to sleep. He guarded her while Buffy patrolled.

She was in Restview now, hovering over a grave that was giving her those about-to-wake up vibes. Buffy had recently been working on her ability to sense newly-fledged vampires. Or she had been before the curriculum had taken that left turn into Advanced Anti-God Swordsmanship. Giles said she'd mastered it as far as any Slayer had, anyway, even if she felt there was more to learn. But the upshot was, she could walk through a cemetery and feel if there was anything near hatching. This one, infesting the body of John N. Link, dead at age 37, was going to be digging himself out soon. So Buffy settled to wait, and did a few katas empty-handed, just to review. She replayed their practice bout that afternoon, the one that had ended with her disarmed and flipping backwards, and thought about what she should have done instead.

Something behind her back tickled at her Slayer-sense, and she moved smoothly into a circular sweep.

"Shadow-boxing, Slayer?"

Buffy modified the strike so her imaginary sword would have cut cleanly through Spike's neck. "Shadow-fencing. What dragged you out of your crypt?"

"Bored, ain't I? Nothing to do on a weeknight in this hellhole. You seen what's playing at the movies? Shite."

"So you gotta torture me instead of just going to LA to piss off Angel?"

"Only thing I can torture, love." Spike grinned at her.

"That's a total lie, Spike. You can torture this vamp before I stake it. Should be up in about five minutes."

"No Watcher with you tonight?"

"Naw. He's home. Guarding."

"Saw him last night in All Saint's, him and that artifact of his. He was having a little dance with a pair of Polgaras. They weren't as happy at the end of it as they were at the beginning. He was a sight."

"Huh."

"He keeps it up, the demon world is going to fear him more than they fear you. Ah. Order's up, love."

Spike reached down and gave the fledgling vamp a hand up from the grave. It was happy for about ten seconds, until it sensed the Slayer. Then the fun began.

It was a decent patrol. Buffy liked company now and then, and Spike could keep up with her. He was obnoxious, and he smelled like stale blood and ashtrays, but he had his points. For a vampire. A creature that was her natural prey. There was something in her that was forever itching to stake Spike, however amusing he was.

Giles cooked dinner on Thursday, after their training. He sat at the kitchen island afterwards, while she did dishes. The sword was laid across the countertop, on a piece of soft cloth. He had Buffy's whetstone and files out. Buffy dried a plate, and watched him running his fingertips along the blade. It was a beautiful piece of metal, a graceful and deadly sweep of black. Buffy had seen over-ornamented swords, gaudy hunks of metal that forgot what they were in their desperation to distract the eye. The patterns swirling on this blade were brutal, functional: they channeled power. But they were also a counterpoint to the shape of the blade.

Buffy'd gotten over her initial longing to have it for herself, but she still knew a beautiful weapon when she saw one.

Giles tapped the counter. "Interesting. It doesn't need maintenance. Still perfectly sharp. Despite the, er, action it saw this week."

"Yeah, Spike told me he'd seen you slicing up a couple of Polgaras the other night."

Giles lifted the sword with both hands and sighted along the blade. "I encountered them on my way home."

Buffy turned back to the sink and scrubbed another dish. "All Saint's is a bit out of your way."

"Well. I felt restless. And it turned out to have been a good idea. We, uh, it's good to have practical applications for the training." Giles ran his hand along the flat of the blade, then put it back down on the counter. "Doesn't need oiling."

"Yeah. I've been thinking of patrolling with a sword as well. Just to put all that training to use. I need a duster like yours, though. Or something to hide the sword under. Where'd you get that, anyway?"

"Oh, er, gift. Long ago. It has a number of modifications to make it useful for patrol. Loops for crosses and stakes, and whatnot. As well as being cut to accommodate the sword. We can have one made for you."

Buffy wiped the last saucepan dry and joined her contradictory mentor at the island. "You're glued inside that coat this week, have you noticed? Almost as bad as Spike."

Giles shrugged. "It's practical."

"Like the shirt?"

Tonight, Giles was wearing tight jeans and a rough black silk shirt that hung and clung and did nothing to disguise the muscles he'd earned training with the Slayer. He looked great, for a guy his age, for a guy sliding his usual specs onto his face and peering over at her amiably.

"Practical, well, not this. I like to think I look good in black, though. At least Anya thought so." He ducked his head briefly.

"Yeah, but it's making me worry."

"Worry? Why on earth?"

"It's really... un-Gilesy."

He rubbed a hand over his sleeve. "Buffy... all of the clothes I've been wearing have been in my closet all along. Some since long before I moved to America. It's, it's a side of myself I haven't shown to you before."

"The new peacock-Giles is festive, I'll give you that. And if you'd been looking like this all along, I wouldn't be wigged right now." No, Buffy thought, she'd probably have been wigged all along at this handsome, magnetic man they'd sent as her Watcher. Tweedy geek-Giles had been safe. This Giles wasn't safe.

Giles took her hand and squeezed it. "I appreciate your concern, Buffy. Truly. But I think there's nothing to worry about."

He sighed, and released her hand. He took an apple from the bowl on the island and fiddled with the stem. "I've been thinking about her, about Jenny, more. And thinking that I never truly let myself move on. I had that, that fling, I suppose, with Olivia, but nothing serious."

Buffy watched him closely. He seemed unaware of her gaze. He continued, quietly. "I've been thinking that I need to relax. Unwind. As you keep telling me. Stop hiding. Meet people. And I'm, er, taking some steps. I won't let it take me away from you, if you're worried about that. You're the most important thing in the world to me, Buffy. I'm your Watcher first." He looked at her when he said that, his face entirely open and earnest.

Buffy wasn't worried about that, she thought. Not jealous, not really, the way she'd been about Olivia. She knew now how deep Giles' sense of duty went. Or was she jealous? Giles had put her a little off balance with that suggestion. Buffy sat back on her stool and tried to be honest about her motivations. Was she just wigging at the idea that her Watcher might be angling for some companionship? The changes were only surface things, just the clothes and the earring. He had been Gilesy enough just a few minutes ago, peering at the sword with his glasses sliding down his nose.

"Yeah. I know." She brushed a hand over his elbow briefly. That silk was fantastic, thick and rough and textured. Buffy would admit to being jealous of his wardrobe. He had some nice stuff hidden at the back, if this was what he was pulling out.

He favored her with that brief brilliant smile, and put the apple back into the bowl.

Buffy said, more casually, "Have you dreamed anything useful?"

He shifted on the stool, and lifted a hand to adjust his glasses. "Ah. Yes. I think so. Spoken commands. The sword responds to the voice. In, er, medieval Cornish. The dialect Ryd spoke. I think."

"You think?"

"Not a language I studied. I can't remember the words when I wake up from the dreams. Or rather, I remember them, but in English. And English commands don't appear to work. I'll investigate the university library on Sunday, see if I can find a primer."

"Vague much, Giles?"

"I know. Sorry. You'll know the moment I have something more definite. I've also, er, acquired a useful-looking text on hellgods. Anya found it for me. On this thing called Ebay. I trust she bid on only that item with my credit card, and not the collection of Victorian pornography she was so excited about." Giles looked utterly helpless and consternated, and Buffy nearly fell off the stool laughing.

He guarded the house while she patrolled that night, settling down with Dawn for a homework session. Buffy worked out a few aggressions and got in some decent karate practice. It was a good patrol, over in only three hours. Buffy returned home happy.

Giles had been sitting up in the living room, as usual, with a pile of books, also as usual. He packed them into the attaché case he'd been carrying the entire time she'd known him, and shrugged on the duster. Buffy decided to get used to it; Giles looked good in brown leather, and it was harmless.

Just before he turned to leave, Giles brushed his lips against her forehead, and told her again not to worry. That made twice Giles had kissed her in one week, for a total of twice in five years. Buffy decided to stay wigged.

Friday night. Dinner at the Magic Box after hours, with pizza and salad and books, and Giles hovering and demanding that they wiped their hands before they touched those bindings. They were reviewing everything they knew about Glory, from the new text and the skimpy information the Council had grudgingly handed over. Xander had the Council notes. Willow was working on a color-coded chart of known facts about hellgods. Tara was following one of Giles' hunches and searching for a reference in Bingley's Greater Demon Religions. Dawn was over at the register, sitting on a high stool and doing her homework on the counter. Anya moved about the shop engaged in incomprehensible activities that she had deemed necessary for a shopkeeper's assistant.

The book Giles had bought had been delivered that afternoon. It purported to be a compendium of all that humanity knew about hellgods. Giles had been in a state of high excitement about it all day. He was bent over the book now, fingers tapping against the pages. Buffy watched him, almost as eager as he was for new information to use against their enemy. If anybody thought it was weird that he was wearing the shoulder scabbard indoors, they didn't say anything.

Giles snorted. "Bloody hell."

"Uh oh. Doesn't sound good," said Willow.

"Listen to this. The Hellgod is so-called because it is associated with the hell dimensions. The god itself is often not hellish in any respect, but is instead a being of great beauty and wisdom, dispensing its beneficence to the men fortunate enough to meet it. Pillock."

Buffy groaned. "I'm not going with beneficent, here. I'm going with loony tunes. And self-obsessed. Let's not forget that. Does the book talk about Imelda-level shoe fixation?"

Giles snorted again and turned a few pages. "This is pure fantasy, as far as I can tell. Some fool's dream. We know far more about hellgods than this man did."

"Lucky us," said Xander.

"Though hmm, maybe there are some facts lurking here. Pure accident, no doubt. It describes inhuman strength and near-invulnerability. Hellgods can be damaged, it seems. By, er, huge outpourings of energy."

Xander slapped the table. "Great! I'll just go steal an atom bomb from the nearest military base--"

"And I'll lure Glory to ground zero and set it off!"

"Let's not even joke about that sort of thing, Buffy, please. We've got a weapon that works, and nobody has to, to, well," said Giles. He shut the book and tossed it onto the table, then rubbed his face. "That was a waste of money."

Buffy sighed, and slumped her chin onto the table.

"Hey! What are you doing? That doesn't belong to you!" Anya was shouting at Dawn.

Buffy was out of her chair and over at the counter in two Slayer-steps, ready to defend her sister.

Giles was there, too. "What's going on? Anya, what is it?"

Anya had her hands flat on the counter next to the cash register, holding down Dawn's arm and a necklace. "This artificial child has just attempted to steal from our shop. I caught her sneaking this into her pocket."

"Dawn?"

Dawn opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again. Buffy ostentatiously looked at Anya's hands, then at Dawn. Dawn burst out angrily. "It's no big deal. It's not like I'm taking magic stuff or anything."

Buffy saw red. "It doesn't matter what you're stealing, Dawn. It's wrong. Period."

She heard a scrape, and turned. Giles had his sword drawn, and held one-handed over his head. His face was odd, twisted. Angry in a way she'd never seen on him before, and she'd seen him beating up Ethan Rayne. Dawn had met his eyes. He moved in on her slowly, holding her gaze. Buffy's mouth hung open.

"What--" Dawn said. Giles cut her off.

"You will not steal from my shop. Do you hear me? There is a thing we do to thieves."

He took another step closer to Dawn. Buffy snapped out of it.

"Giles. Drop it. Now!"

Giles dropped the sword. It struck deep into the wooden floor at his feet. It quivered. Buffy could hear it ringing faintly in the utter silence that had descended on the store.

"Well said, Giles," said Anya.

Giles and Dawn were both frozen in place. Buffy couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe anything that had just happened. She grabbed Giles by the collar and hauled him into the training room. He didn't resist, just stumbled after her. She tossed him onto the couch, where he lay limp. She kept a fist twisted in his shirt, holding him down. Not that he was fighting.

"Oh, God, Buffy." He stared up at her. Whatever fury had been in his face before was entirely gone, replaced by shock and dismay.

"What the fuck was that?"

"I don't know!"

"You hurt my sister and I'll kill you, Giles. Watcher or not."

"I wouldn't have. We wouldn't have. She's family. I think I just wanted to frighten her... I'm so sorry. Buffy, I--" He swallowed.

She probed him with Slayer senses, on the alert for anything out of the ordinary. Anything un-Gilesy. Other than the deep red cotton shirt he wore at the moment, yet another attention-getting outfit. She tried to be honest and open to whatever she could sense. But there was only a quietly humming sense of comfort, the feeling she'd always gotten from him and from Merrick before him. The Watcher vibe of safety and refuge. Whatever was going on with Giles, it did not involve demonic influence. Buffy trusted her senses on that one.

Midlife crisis, maybe. Worse than last year's, if so. Get a magic sword, start acting like you're d'Artagnan.

Buffy let go of his shirt and collapsed next to him. "Shit, Giles. Don't do that. Don't... I can't have you losing control like that."

"Agreed, Buffy. I don't know what came over me. I haven't-- haven't been angry like that since... Ethan, really. I shall have to apologize to Dawn."

"Huh. Dunno about that. Can't blame you for getting a least a little mad. I heard Anya bitching just the other day about how much stuff you've lost to shoplifting."

"It does rather strike at my means of making a living." Giles sat up and took off his glasses for a vigorous polish. Buffy could see that his hands were shaking.

"What the hell was Dawn thinking, anyway? Stealing right in front of Anya?"

Giles replaced his glasses and tucked his handkerchief away. He met her gaze for a moment, and flushed. Then his face changed. "Oh. Buffy. Has Dawn confined her theft to the Magic Box? Or has she been, er..."

"Oh, damn."

Buffy got up and headed out. Giles trailed after her. The gang was gathered around the tarot table. Dawn had obviously been crying, about which Buffy was decidedly mixed. Dawn shoved a little pile of jewelry across the table toward Giles. Anya snagged it and started sorting it out.

"There's some more stuff at home. I'll bring it in. I'm really sorry. Please don't chop off my hands like Anya says."

Giles ran his hands through his hair. "I'm not going to chop anything off, Dawn. I do apologize. Truly. While theft is not good behavior, neither is threatening people with swords."

"Except when Buffy does it," said Anya. "She can throw swords at Council people and not get into trouble, but when a simple shopkeeper attempts to defend his property against the depredations of--"

Xander clapped his hand over her mouth. "Hon, there's a time and a place."

Giles opened his arms, and Dawn stepped over for a hug. That, at least, was normal behavior for the two of them. "Dawn, please, if you feel the urge to do that again, come talk to me. This may be, ah, surprising, but I once did the same."

"Maybe," said Dawn, reluctantly.

"It's either that or talk to me," said Buffy. And she was not feeling too generous at the moment. Buffy tried to guess how much Dawn's pile of shoplifted goods was worth. A lot, probably. Giles tended to stock hand-crafted goods, in an appeal to the higher end of the market. At least in jewelry. She didn't know who she was more pissed off at now, Dawn or Giles. Okay, she knew the answer to that. Dawn. Giles was scaring her, not pissing her off.

Giles pulled the sword out of the floor and resheathed it. He laid it across the counter.

"Leave it," Buffy told him. He nodded to her.

Xander knelt down and fingered the slot in the floorboards. "Like somebody used a router on it," he said. "That thing is sharp. Magically sharp. Are we letting Giles touch it again?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's dangerous. Ya know what happened to people who got near Elric."

"Who was Elric, Xander?" Buffy needed a laugh. Badly. She followed Giles back to the tarot table, where Dawn was sulking in Tara's arms.

"You people are uncultured louts! Can't believe you."

"My sword is not a bound demon, Xander. It does not have a will of its own. It, it, it will not kill people who get near it just to keep me alive." Giles waved his hands in front of his face.

"Thank you! Somebody knows what I'm talking about. And how do you know it won't?"

"It's just an enchanted piece of metal, Xander. We know its provenance."

"How do you know it hasn't got a dragon's soul stuck inside it? Huh?"

"Because... oh dear." Giles sat down, hard, in the nearest chair. Buffy sank down next to him. Uh oh.

"Giles, tell me what dragons are like. Specifically, the dragon this thing was stuck inside." Buffy folded her arms on the table and rested her chin on them.

"Oh, God," he said.

Willow answered for him. "Learned. Curious. Magical in the extreme. Pretty ancient. This one was a reclusive scholar."

"There ya go," said Xander. "This sword is turning Giles into a learned and curious scholar. Thanks, Will!"

Willow stuck her tongue out at Xander. "The dragon's personality could still be coming through. Have you felt more scholarly than usual?"

They all stared at her. "No, Willow. Not particularly."

"Jeez, more like just the opposite, what with brandishing swords at my sister."

Willow frowned. "But this dragon was supposed to be extra-intelligent. Anaoc sought it out to learn from it. And then the whole mistake about the meeting happened, and..."

"Yeah, yeah. But what was it like? What was it into? What did it do for fun on Friday nights?"

Giles took off his glasses and inspected the lenses. "This one appears to have been quite reclusive. It had a friendly relationship with the nearby Pueblo tribe, but otherwise didn't get out much. It was quite old at the time of the misunderstanding."

"That doesn't sound right. Aren't dragons temperamental? Don't they sit on big mounds of gold, or something? And you're not supposed to laugh at them while they're still alive." Buffy had read The Hobbit once.

"Buffy, Tolkien was writing about one specific dragon, and taking some license about it. Individuals vary, among the more intelligent ones. The way people are different from each other."

"Oh. So they're as different as you and me."

Giles nodded at her. "And as similar."

Tara spoke up. "Mr Giles, do you dream about the dragon?"

Glasses back on, head tilted as he considered the question. "I believe I might have dreamed about fighting the dragon once. About the two of them, Ryd and Anaoc, often."

"Huh," said Willow. "I think we need to do more research on this."

She climbed up to the loft and came down with a book on dragon species. She and Tara began compiling notes. Xander turned back to his Council notes, and Giles to his disappointing book on hellgods. Willow quizzed him, periodically, about his dreams. He looked over his shoulder at the counter, every now and then, but he left the sword where it lay. Buffy watched him uneasily. Something was up. Not necessarily evil, but not necessarily good, either.

Buffy put the sword in a cabinet for storage overnight, at Giles' request. Nobody else could touch it. It still gave Willow shocks. Xander let his hand hover over the hilt, then shook his head. "No way. It's not that it doesn't like me, it's that I'm not good enough. And I have no freakin' clue why I just said that. Shit, Giles, this thing is wiggy."

Giles buried his hands deep in his trouser pockets, as if preventing himself from reaching out to it were difficult. But he turned his back and left the shop without comment.

It was Saturday night, and time to see what was up at the high school.

Buffy met Giles at the Magic Box after closing, carrying cartons of Thai for a Watcher-Slayer dinner. Green curry tofu for Giles, red curry chicken for her. The scent of spicy coconut milk mingled with the usual Magic Box incense and dried herbs. Buffy spooned curry over rice, and ate while Giles summarized the day's research for her, which amounted to a big zilch.

He looked spare and dangerous today. He'd chosen to wear black: black jeans and boots under a loose over-shirt that Buffy had seen before. She'd have commented, but she was wearing black herself. Practical fighting clothes, for the expected evening entertainment. The expected brawl.

After dinner, Giles cleared away the cartons while Buffy got out the weapons. Bottles of holy water. Stakes into pockets. She already had a knife in her right boot, in the sheath Giles had had installed for her. She hesitated for a moment, then got the dragon sword from the cabinet. Buffy was nervous about it, but it was the right weapon to take to what promised to be a nasty vamp-fight. As always, when she touched it, a tickle ran along her spine: something evaluated her, and found her acceptable.

Giles sighed when he took the sword from her.

They were early to the party, but late anyway, judging by the cars parked on nearby streets. Buffy wondered how the police could possibly ignore the noise. Giles parked his own car some distance away, to give them a chance to approach with stealth, not that stealth was particularly difficult. Buffy was just being cautious. They had no idea what sort of numbers they'd be dealing with.

They took the back way in, scrambling through wrecked hallways, exploiting their once-perfect knowledge of the school floorplan. They slipped into the boy's locker room through the side entrance, once the province of football and basketball lettermen. Fallen, twisted lockers blocked the doorway to the gym, but they had a good enough view over the top. The main party was in the gym. At least, the main party for the humans. There was a keg, and people smoking cigarettes and other things, and couples making out in the corners. Music, something hard and fast and electronic, blared from an impressive pair of speakers. Undoubtedly stolen. Buffy identified the music; the Matrix soundtrack. Xander had played that until she'd threatened to get prodigious on his ass. It was the most squalid of the squalid teen parties Buffy had seen, and she'd seen a few in her days at Hemery. At Sunnydale, she'd been too busy being responsible to plumb the depths of her peer group's stupidity. Which, apparently, were deep indeed.

The girl's locker room was where the serious action was. Teenagers went in, but they weren't coming out.

Buffy pointed it out to Giles. He nodded. She tried to count vamps. Reliably picking them out from the press of bodies was difficult. Too many kids dancing. Her senses prickled, urging her into the fight. Buffy held herself in check. Instinct was useful, but here she needed a plan.

She pressed her lips against Giles' ear. "Lots. A dozen, more. And more in the locker room. Gonna be tough. I'm gonna clear out the lockers, see what reacts. Draw them over here. Back to back."

Giles nodded and drew his sword. Buffy felt it next to her, a black spike of potential. Friendly, to her. How she knew that, she had no idea. That bothered her. Not that she didn't trust her senses. She didn't like not knowing why she felt that way.

Double-check pockets. Stakes there. Stakes in each boot. And a stake up her right sleeve. One centering breath. Buffy shifted into combat mode, all senses heightened, all reflexes tightened. She crouched on the balls of her feet, picked up the bank of lockers, and sent it sliding across the gym floor.

Humans shouted, and moved away. Vamps turned, sensed her, and reacted. Vamped out. Screams. And the first vamp was in her face.

Buffy fought. She threw stakes, kicked, spun, punched, improvised. The keg itself was a weapon in her hands, and then a tool for sweeping aside the cluster of still-human kids too stupid to flee. The skin on her knuckles split from punching ridged demon-faces. Dust got in her hair and under her shirt. It made her itch. This annoyed her. She allowed it to motivate a few hard kicks.

Beside her, Giles fought. He was a berserker. Whirling death, pure grace. Buffy caught glimpses of him in action, coat swirling. She counted his death-tally as she heard the demon-screams, with a corner of her mind. Giles was keeping pace with her kill rate. An astonishing feat for a mere human. She started flinging vamps at him, to be disabled or decapitated, whichever he could manage.

At some point, Buffy allowed herself to cartwheel into the sound system. She silenced it forever with a well-placed kick on the CD player.

"I heard that thing too many times," she told the next vampire. "Rammstein is so pretentious. Give me an emo chick singer any day."

She staked it before it could reply.

A pause in the festivities. Giles turned to dispatch the half-dismembered vampire writhing on the floor behind him, then came over to her. He was breathing hard, hair wet with sweat. The Slayer had him there, at least. Buffy's heartrate was already back to normal. He turned slowly, in counterpoint with her, both in guard stance. Buffy looked for collateral damage, for humans caught in the fight. Surely Giles had clipped somebody he ought not, gotten sloppy with targets during that banshee flail session. But no humans had died. Piles of dust everywhere, however. Buffy's estimate of a dozen had been conservative.

They'd been mostly infesting teenaged bodies. That was an awful lot of dead high school students. Dead kids who wouldn't be coming home. Wouldn't be attending their senior proms in another month.

Buffy couldn't let herself think about that right now.

"Vamps nearby. The locker room. I dunno... maybe five. Going to be tight quarters. Maybe a ringleader in there. Brace for a fight."

Giles nodded. The sword came up again, tip at heart level. Buffy let him guard her back and started moving across the gym. Debris everywhere, beer bottles, smashed glass. The human kids had long since fled. Tomorrow they'd get on their cellphones and tell stories about the gang fight. Hadda be the Bloods, they'd say.

Buffy paused at the locker room doorway, listening, her whole being strained to sense into the room ahead of her. Hand signals to Giles: she'd go left, he'd go right. Deep breath. She rolled through the door.

And it was anticlimactic. Five vamps, clumsy and cramped in the confined space of shower stalls and lockers, were no match for the Slayer and her swordsman-Watcher. One of them had been the football coach. That explained the letter jacket boy, at least. Three minutes later Buffy and Giles were standing in the blood-spattered showers, counting human bodies. Six dead kids. Six people she'd failed. Three of them were going to come back from the grave in a few days.

Buffy stood memorizing their faces. Giles came up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. "It's harder to count the ones you save," he said, softly.

"Yeah, I know." And she did know. But this was the part of the job that sucked.

They left the high school without speaking further. It had been cleared. They'd call in a tip to the police department, and by midnight it would be swarming with cops and floodlights, bound tight with new fencing, and guarded. Dealt with. Done.

Buffy turned her attention to the next problem in front of her. She had several choices of problem to attack, but it was now clear what the most urgent one was.

"Giles. The sword. It's affecting you. Starting with your fighting. What you just did..."

"I... perhaps, yes."

"No perhaps, Giles. Trust an outsider's perspective here. Trust your Slayer. If it was just one thing, maybe I'd believe you. But it's a whole bunch." Buffy walked backwards in front of him for a few steps, then danced around alongside him. "Want me to list them?"

"Lord."

They reached his car. Giles popped the trunk. They piled their weapons in. Lastly, and reluctantly, Giles laid the dragon sword across the top. He muttered an apology to it, then shut the trunk. Buffy watched him as he drove across town to Xander's place, where they'd pick up Dawn. Traffic lights reflected in his glasses; streetlights shone blue-pale across his angular face. He looked like the same man as the man who'd driven her to the desert two weeks ago. Same worry-lines in his forehead, same smile-crinkles at the corners of his eyes. Was he the same man, truly?

The clothes he was wearing, that silk shirt, that duster. They'd been in the back of his closet, he said. The same thing with the gold ring in his ear. It had been there, waiting to be worn. But Giles hadn't chosen to wear them until now. He would never have drawn a sword to threaten her sister, whom he had promised to guard, not even to frighten her. And the way he'd fought: Giles was a good swordsman, but he wasn't a legendary one. Or he hadn't been, until tonight. Personality change. Buffy couldn't rationalize it any longer. And from the expression on Giles' face, he'd stopped being able to rationalize it as well.

Giles parked the car in Buffy's driveway and turned it off. He leaned his head against the steering wheel. Buffy listened to the tick of the engine cooling. A car drove past. The headlights shone across his hair, blinding Buffy for a moment. Giles sat up, and slipped his keys into his coat pocket.

"This is the weapon we wanted, Buffy."

"Yeah."

"I still don't know how to activate it."

"But what you can do with it might be enough. The show you put on tonight... Giles, you'd have killed me pretty much right away."

"You're not a hellgod."

"You know what I'm saying."

"I do. But the price, the price, Buffy... This personality shift."

"It's the sword, I know. The sword has... opinions."

"Something like that, yes. I am increasingly, um, aware of it. As a personality itself. Influencing me."

"Who knew dragons liked silk shirts?"

He shook his head impatiently. "I'm fairly certain there isn't a dragon's soul bound in the sword. It's a human. I think it's Ryd. The swordsman himself."

Buffy leaned toward him, excited again. "His swordfighting style. That's what I'm seeing in you."

"Yes. His fighting style. His temper. Dreams of his lover."

"His clothes?"

"His taste, yes." Giles gestured, sweeping a hand over his chest and his black shirt and jeans.

"Wow. This is kinda cool. You--" Buffy stopped herself. Giles didn't look as if he thought it were cool.

"I don't know what's happening to me. When I'm holding the sword, I'm not sure which one of us is in charge any more. I can feel him in my head almost all the time now. I didn't want to admit what was happening. Oh, God, Buffy." Head down on the wheel again.

Buffy sat motionless in the passenger seat, thinking. Giles, changing. That was change, all right. Change so drastic the original man would be gone. Geeky Giles, with clipboard and tweed, submerged inside a dragon. Giles, gone.

"Oh no," she said. "No way. No no. I'm not losing you too. Nobody else. Not you, not Dawn, not anybody. We're getting rid of it. Now."

Giles sat up. "Buffy, it's a bloody apocalypse! Do you know what happens if Glory gets that key? Dimensional breach. Hellbeasts rampaging. We can't let it happen. Who bloody cares if I lose myself? If all seven of us die preventing that, it will have been worth the price."

Buffy swore under her breath. Giles was right. He didn't usually say it in such a painfully blunt way, but he was right. But not them. Not her friends. It was her job to do the sacrificing. She was the one who died so that the rest of the world could sleep tucked up in their beds, toys on their lawns wet with innocent dew. That was how the Slayer gig always ended.

"It's my job. Not yours. Mine."

Giles turned to face her in his seat. "Buffy, do you remember our first apocalypse?"

"I do. I remember I had to sock you in the jaw to stop you from being stupid." Buffy almost smiled.

"And I remember that you died instead. I swore not to let it happen again. I'm willing to pay this price. It's, it's my duty to you. As your Watcher. And it's not death, Buffy. Just... change. Some kind of merging?"

He turned away again. Buffy watched his knuckles whiten as he clenched and unclenched his hands on the steering wheel. Saw the scabs on his right hand, where he'd barked the knuckles earlier, in training. Saw the scars on the fingers of his left hand. For a long time she'd forgotten how he'd gotten those.

Buffy had sworn her own oaths about things she wasn't going to let happen again.

Giles took off his glasses and held them in his scarred fingers. "Buffy. Our loyalty to you... don't doubt it. We know whom we were sent to serve. We're your sworn liegemen. We'll kill this hellgod in your honor."

We. Giles kept saying we. It was probably too late to stop. Whatever it was. Giles put his glasses into his shirt pocket, and opened the car door.